“Sí,” he replied. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
She almost laughed out loud. If a woman had to be marooned with a pirate, what were the chances he’d turn out to be a man who’d try to spare her feelings with his sense of humor? “The bad news,” she whispered.
He bade her sit on the luggage. “We are alone here,” he began.
She waited, sensing there was more that he was hesitant to tell her.
He averted his gaze. “I wasn’t able to see another island, and I still don’t know where we are.”
His words didn’t come as a surprise, yet, clinging to a last hope, she said, “Perhaps if you’d got right to the top.”
She regretted the glimmer of hurt in his eyes when he looked up. “You know I did.”
Guilt gnawed at her. He’d risked his life and she’d doubted him. Clearly, he felt he should know where they were. She had to be stronger, for both their sakes. She reached for his hand. “I’m sorry. What’s the good news?”
He stood. “We’re going to the wreck, to see what we can salvage.”
She squinted up at him. “This is the good news?”
He grinned. “No. First, we see if we can drag out the mattress from my bunk, then the good news.”
He helped her rise, holding onto her hand when she turned to the beach. “Do we have a bargain?”
She looked into his intriguing eyes, excited by the prospect of sleeping on a mattress. “Sí, Capitán,” she teased.
* * *
Maximiliano didn’t fault Heidi for doubting him. The great Lázaro, scourge of the Spanish Main, had no idea of their location. If the wreck stayed on the rocks, he could eventually gather enough wood to build a raft. However, if they set off in the wrong direction, there’d be little chance of survival.
He forced these concerns aside as Heidi tied on her shoes and looked at him hopefully. He should consider himself fortunate he hadn’t been stranded with an ugly shrew, although then he might not have the problem of the inconvenient arousal that hardened every time he touched Heidi.
He’d gathered sturdy vines on his way back, and formed them into a loop, which he slung over his shoulder. “Follow my lead,” he warned as they set off.
“I’m getting better at this,” she boasted when they made progress over the rocks.
The footwear proved to be an impediment when she tried to follow him up the side of the doomed ship and over the gunwale. “I have to take them off,” she shouted, her exasperation evident.
When she finally reached the gunwale, he stretched out his arms and pulled her to safety. It was the first time they’d both returned to the ship and she seemed reluctant to separate their bodies. “It’s not your fault, Maximiliano,” she murmured, her head on his chest.
She was right that he had no control over wind and weather, yet he felt a burden lift from his heart.
“I’m thankful it’s you I’m stranded with,” she said.
She’d been married and must understand the reason for the hard, male flesh nudging her belly. He was elated when she pressed her mons to his arousal and said, “I see you feel the same way.”
The temptation to make love to her on the shifting deck of his ruined ship was powerful, but they didn’t have long before the tide came back in. “The mattress,” he rasped as a reminder to himself as much as to her.
She glanced up at him, her eyes full of thwarted lust. “Oh,ja.”
He looked forward to the pool with even greater anticipation.
* * *
From the outset of their marriage, Heidi and Torsten’s sexual relationship had followed what she assumed was the path all young couples trod. As her mother had predicted, on their wedding night he’d mounted her, grunted his way to completion, pecked a kiss on her forehead, then fallen asleep. It became the routine. At first, she’d been plagued with a feeling there was supposed to be something more, but gradually she’d become resigned to the occasional bedding. He seemed to enjoy it, which meant she was a good wife, though he couldn’t hide his disappointment as time went on and there was no child in her womb.
His enslavement to alcohol changed things and she gradually became the object on which he took out his anger. His sudden death brought only a sense of relief that she would never again be subjected to his assaults.
Now, she craved a pirate! Surrounded by wreckage, castaway on an uninhabited island, she was filled with an insane urge to rip off her clothes and beg him to make love to her. Clearly, the near-death experience had stolen her wits.